200 THE HUMAN HEART. 



repeat, that there is nothing but life in the body, and no life with- 

 out feeling, or quasi-feeling. We say quasi-feeling to express, that 

 even where the feeling is inscrutable and unconscious, we dare not, 

 in reason's interest, give it up as feeling. Where all seems not 

 only dead to us, but contradictory to our life, we still know that we 

 are at work with the same versatile tools ; we know by our brains 

 that we are feeling in our very bones, although we never feel our 

 bones but when the nail-prints of pain or inflammation are shown 

 to us. So far as we carry this feeling into our studies, so far we 

 are exploring the living body; so far as we do not, we are groping 

 in dead flesh, and making a science of corpses. 



We do not now investigate the problems of embryology. The 

 order in which the body is formed, is one thing ; the order in which 

 it subsists and acts, is another. The king is not less a king because 

 he was once elected out of his own subjects; and the history of his 

 elevation is a distinct subject from that of his functions. Let us cut 

 off questions, and take limited fields to cultivate. In these pages 

 we treat of the adult heart, and what it is, leaving a thousand prob- 

 lems to be treated at other times, and by other persons. 



To proceed from one expanse of feelings to another, the blood- 

 space which we call the lungs is the bodily affection for those two 

 ends which we term air and thought, whence the synonymous ex- 

 pression of both by the word spirit. The coincidence of thinking 

 and breathing, the representation of what goes on in the mind by 

 what is proceeding in the respiration, is conclusive as to the fact 

 here set forth. The lungs therefore are the love of air on the one. 

 hand; the bodily love of intellect on the other; the processes by 

 which they inspire the atmosphere being the same as those by which 

 they rouse and inspire the mind; thus deep breath will produce 

 deep attention; at all events, a careful minding of the air as it is 

 drawn in, if no more intellectual object be present to the brain. It 

 is here to be remarked, that whether we say that organs have feel- 

 ings, likings, or loves, it amounts to the same thing : for feelings 

 are agreeable or disagreeable; and an agreeable feeling once expe- 

 rienced, leads to a desire to obtain it again at another time, which 

 desire, the child of love, henceforth becomes the active point in the 

 feeling. Therefore the eye is impregnated with the love of the vis- 



